10 short breaks by train in Europe

Tours

TOURS, FRANCE

JOURNEY TIME: 4hrs 30mins

With good bus connections to some of the most sublime
chateaux of the Loire (Amboise, Azay-le-Rideau,
Villandry), Tours, which lies between the Loire and one of the its
tributaries, the Cher, makes an excellent base from which to
explore the valley and its treasures. And the city itself is not
without charm. Henry James described Touraine, the region of which
it is capital, as the essential France: 'It is the land of
Rabelais, of Descartes, of Balzac, of good books and good company,
as well as good dinners and good houses.' And indeed there are
statues of Rabelais and Descartes on the rue Nationale in Tours,
overlooking the river, and portraits of the latter (by Frans Hals)
as well as Balzac in the Musée des Beaux Arts -
not to mention works by Jean Cocteau and Picasso in Musée
du Gemmail, a gallery devoted to unleaded stained
glass.

To get the best from a weekend here, you need to hire a care, in
which case you should stay just outside the city at Les
Hautes Roches (see Where to Stay, below). This puts you
within 60km of Chambord (François I's
Gormenghast-like 440-room pleasure palace, so uncompromising in its
scale that the River Cosson had to be diverted to conform to its
plan, but worth visiting for its two principal staircases,
attributed to Leonardo da Vinci and entwined like a double helix so
that no two people should ever have to pass on it). It's also close
to Cheverny, which will be familiar to readers of
Tintin as the model for Captain Haddock's ancestral home
Marlinspike, and Chenonceau, indisputably the most
beautiful and most photographed of the Renaissance chateaux,
stretching on piers across the slow-flowing Cher.

HOW TO GET THERE
The TGV from Paris to Tours leaves the Gare Montparnasse, 14 stops
on the Métro from the Garde du Nord (plus a short trip on the
world's fastest-moving walkway), and takes just over an hour.

WHERE TO STAY NEAR TOURS
In the village of Rochecorbon, 7km east along the N152, lies
Les Hautes Rouches (00 33 2 47 52 88 88; www.leshautesroches.com), a 17th-century,
white-stone mansion on a high terrace overlooking the Loire. It is
built on the site of an ancient troglodyte monastery - which
explains why 12 of the 15 comfortable guestrooms here have been
literally hewn from the cliff face. There is also an excellent
Michelin-starred restaurant.